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Evolutionary biology

Annelid who's who

Nature volume 471, pages 44–45 (2011)Cite this article

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The origin of the annelids is buried in distant evolutionary time. A molecular phylogeny resolves their deep family interrelationships and provides a picture of their 'urannelid' ancestor. See Letter p.95

Some animals are so familiar that we can scarcely believe we know little about their origins. Take earthworms, for example, common to everyone's garden, which belong to a large phylum of invertebrates — the annelids (ringed worms). The hitherto shrouded evolutionary history of annelids is now illuminated by Struck et al. on page 95 of this issue1.

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Figure 1: An illustration of the Errantia and Sedentaria by Ernst Häckel, dated 1904.

MARIXVERLAG

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  1. Detlev Arendt is in the Developmental Biology Unit, European Molecular Biology Laboratory, 69012 Heidelberg, Germany.,

    Detlev Arendt

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  1. Detlev Arendt
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Correspondence to Detlev Arendt.

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Arendt, D. Annelid who's who. Nature 471, 44–45 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/471044a

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